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Simply stated the Y2K problem is a date format problem.  The problem is real.  The extent to which Y2K affects business within a clinic will vary.  The extent that it may affect your business because of problems outside the clinic is hard to access and virtually impossible for you or me to control.

The year 2000 is fast approaching.  There are seemingly an endless number of places on the Internet where you can receive information on this topic and there are many thought-provoking books that are available as well.

The U.S. Commerce department offers a "Y2K Jumpstart Kit" (self-assessment) that can be downloaded from y2khelp.nist.gov.

We hope that you will find information here that will help you to identify whether or not you will have problems.  We expect that some problems will be  more difficult to solve and some things may not cause any problems at all with how you do business.

Have you thought much about how you will survive in a market that may place many of your clients in a cash-short situation?

The basic question that you need to answer within the clinic is what devices are capable of having a date entered?  Your thermostat typically does not know what year it is, but it may be programmed for a day of the week using a scheme like 7=Sunday.  The copier will probably be unaffected by either the year or that the year 2000 is a leap year with 29 days in February.

Many basic phones do not rely on the date.  An analog watch and early digital watches do not keep track of the days of the month.  Recent digital watches do keep track of the year, even if they do not display the year.  In fact, these watches will generally not work as accurate date keeping devices after a year like 2035 -- you may simply need to manually set the watch to the correct date.

Drill Down --

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Last Modified:  Monday, 03 July, 2000